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The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Václav Havel

The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning – in other words, of absurdity – the more energetically meaning is sought.

Words, Meaning, Absence

The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility.

Responsibility, Heart, World

The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both.

Leadership, Powerful, World

It lies in human nature that where you experience your first laughs, you also remember the age kindly.

Nature, Experience, Remember

Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.

Good, Chance, Succeed

Hope is a feeling that life and work have meaning. You either have it or you don’t, regardless of the state of the world that surrounds you.

Life, Work, World

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Optimism, Turn, Well

Isn’t it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.

Life, Moment, Doubt

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Turn, Will, Well

Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.

Work, Success, Good

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.

The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We feel morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought. Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility or forgiveness lost their depth and dimension.